


put your face in the gutter of a snake pit

by mistrali



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arguments, Drunk Crowley (Good Omens), Gen, Hurt Crowley, Pre-Canon, Sickfic, Vomiting, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 10:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21252254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/pseuds/mistrali
Summary: In the aftermath of his commendation for the Spanish Inquisition, Crowley gets very drunk for a week.Can’t remember if this was in the show, but it was/is in the book. This is my take on it.





	put your face in the gutter of a snake pit

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme prompt 'Crowley vomiting messily'.
> 
> Sorry, this is only a tiny bit of emeto. I'd intended to put more, but it sort of turned into its own thing. 
> 
> Title comes from Tigerlily by La Roux.
> 
> Edited on 25 Nov following feedback from NomDePenne on Discord.

After coming back from the torture chamber in Seville, Crowley burnt the commendation to ash with a snap of shaking fingers. Hell would probably have some underling filing away three hundred copies of it, anyway, just for shits and giggles. “Fuck off,” he muttered, too low for anyone listening Below to catch.

Then, too out of sorts to negotiate the streets, he materialised in one of the seedier cantinas of Madrid. The place he alighted at was barely a tavern, really. More of a hole in the wall: oily-haired barkeep, grimy basin, jugs crusted with things he didn’t care to imagine, and in the middle of it all, three dancing girls outside. Not that Crowley had anything against dancing girls, as such (after all, he’d _been_ one, back in Mohenjo-Daro, and Periclean Athens too) but these ones wore tattered, greasy rags. Some of them were slips of things - all adults, by the looks of them, but half-starved.

A man, already half in his cups, glared at him from one of the cracked three-legged stools that passed for seats. Crowley smiled back, slithered to an empty seat which had just become vacant, and concentrated. The man sidled over to one of the ill-clad girls, undid a fat bundle of gold and handed her three gold pieces. Then, to her bewilderment and the outrage of her colleagues, he lurched back the way he’d come.

For good measure, Crowley performed a small miracle to amplify the man’s hangover, and smiled to himself. He could outsnake all the venomous bastards in the place, if it came to that. 

He cast a quick miracle to make the humans forget he was there at all, never mind how much he was drinking. Then he ordered a jug of their darkest beer (no notes of anything in this one) and miracled it cloudy russet, with honey and dates - wouldn’t do to get drunk on any old swill. After his eighteenth jug the world began to look reassuringly bleary about the edges; the twenty-eighth necessitated a few miracles. The barkeep changed, and changed again, but it didn’t matter which human gave him drinks so long as they kept pouring. This new corporation, it turned out, could hold quite a lot of liquor. 

At some point he thought he’d had enough, after endless rounds of sobering himself up just enough not to feel the chill. He’d go for a walk. That was more like it. Clear his head, then get back to... to his little house in the heart of the city. He made it three streets away, under what power he didn’t know, shivering despite his coat. Warily, he approached one of the cart drivers, but the moment the horses scented him, they shied and swished their tails with fear. Blessing under his breath, staying well out of the way of the carts, he kept to the shadows. There was too much foot traffic for him to go snake and, anyway, demon he might be, but full-scale riots weren’t exactly his forte. Finally, with an incredible effort, he was outside his house and half-dead of the exertion. 

A dim light was shining at the threshold... Must’ve drunk too much, he thought blurrily, and blinked hard. The light didn’t go away, but it flickered a little. He squinted and tried to say “Aziraphale”, but what came out was an indistinct series of hisses and slurs, half-snake and half-human. The light was in his eyes now; he flinched back from it and stumbled over a plant. Arms reached out to clasp him as he reeled backwards and the cobblestones reared up to meet him.

———-

Crowley woke up tucked into worn fleece blankets in a bed in the angel’s parlour, frighteningly alone and lucid, a sprig of lemon verbena at his pillow. Fire blazed in the grate. A lamp illuminated furniture that was two hundred years out of date. Velvet curtains, closed against the dawn, let in the faintest trickle of daylight. 

His nose and mouth were full of thick, stringy mucus. “Ugh,” he muttered, blowing his nose several times and then spitting hoarsely into a clean handkerchief. He contemplated the water pitcher, decided it was too much work and buried his head under the covers instead.

He was jolted awake by his churning, cramping stomach. As he gasped and sat up, mouth filling with saliva, his stomach gave a frightful lurch; bile surged up his throat. Oh, shit — he clapped a hand over his mouth and scrambled for the bucket, but too late. He’d missed by half a foot, and, throat burning, he heaved up veritable geysers of brown acid all over his hands and Aziraphale’s Persian rug.

He knelt there for a while, retching, shuddering and trying not to whimper, and finally miracled away some of the vomit. Then he collapsed back onto the bed, limp with even that effort. Aziraphale was standing there, dressed in blue and violet. His face was a picture: concern, perturbation and sympathy played across it by turns.

A wave of his hand and the mess was gone, and there was a cup of water on Crowley’s bedside table. ”My dear boy,” he said. “I don’t mean to pry.” 

“Horseshit,” whispered Crowley, bent double around one of the lemon-scented pillows. Aziraphale could ferret with the best of them, all polite determination and icy silences. Crowley‘d seen the way he bargained for old manuscripts. He was a stubborn arsehole masquerading as someone’s elderly bachelor uncle.

The angel didn’t take the bait. “What possessed you to get so drunk?” he asked grimly.

“Fancied a jaunt,” rasped Crowley. “Was nothing. Er. Just business. Sorry about your rug.” He rinsed out his mouth and gave Aziraphale a grin. Disarming it was not - it was a rictus of a thing, he saw in the shaving-glass opposite, and he looked a sight. Drawn, bags under his eyes, bloodshot sclera. Like Pestilence come a-calling. It was a good thing he didn’t go in for seductions.

Aziraphale, scowling, followed his gaze. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you were trampled by a horse next. Or discorporated of the plague,” he said waspishly.

“Yeah, well, I might’ve been.”

“My dear, if you’ve quite finished insulting my intelligence —”

“What intelligence?” 

“Crowley!”

“I thought patience was a virtue, angel. But fine, if you really want to know, I got a gold ssstar from Dagon for the latest Inquisition,” Crowley said, showing fangs. “Wasn’t much work at all, really. Spot of water torture here, bit of drawing and quartering there.” He raised an imaginary glass. “Here’s to outdoing Attila the Hun. Top bloke, Attila. Really upstanding citizen.”

He heard Aziraphale’s sharp intake of breath, and ground his teeth. He didn’t have the stomach for Aziraphale’s _pity_, or for a scolding, not when the angel couldn’t take a hint. 

He’d thought this was over. Every century he thought humans had invented themselves into a new golden age. Every century they seemed to fashion more sinister and more malevolent variations on the same devices. One more Inquisition, added to the total over the last couple of hundred years. “We were due for another one anyway,” he said, bitterly, and scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands.

Aziraphale’s eyes went cold and distant. Crowley remembered with a chill that he’d been at Sodom, and wondered uneasily what else Heaven had done to him, or had him do, over the millennia. But the angel’s expression gentled as he walked over to sit on the bed. His hands came up to rest on Crowley’s shoulders. “I’ll see what I can do in the way of miracles.”

“Oh, your _quota_ of miracles. Thanks for that, every little bit helps the war effort. I knew you’d come over all righteous,” snarled Crowley. He twisted out of Aziraphale’s grip, goaded beyond endurance. “Ever occur to you that I might’ve wanted some privacy? I told you to mind your own fucking businessssss, and you couldn’t leave it alone.” 

Aziraphale flinched. “I - you’re right,” he admitted, with a sigh. “That was ill-done of me. But I had some paperwork to run past you. And when I realised you were three sheets to the wind, I could hardly have left you there.” His mouth worked.

“That’s not an apology, that’s a justification,” growled Crowley. But Aziraphale’s angelic instincts, bless him, wouldn’t let him rest until he’d soul-searched, salvaged, aided or rescued every sodding person he possibly could and then claimed divine right on top of it. He’d been like that for centuries: while Crowley worked himself into knots over morality, Aziraphale had a disconcerting habit of simplicity. Crowley found he was too tired to care, or to argue.

He closed his eyes. “You’re a sanctimonious bastard,” he breathed. “Remember that next time you try to save me from myself.”

“As long as I have you to remind me, my dear.”


End file.
